ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

In the post-Freudian West, dreams are most often understood as expressions of our unconscious, or subconscious, selves. But prior to and outside of the psychoanalytic tradition, dreams have often been seen as privileged locations for connection between humans and their others. Religious and mythological traditions from around the world emphasize the potential of dreams to lead the dreamer outside of herself, to provide access to super-human, extra-human, or other-than-human realms. Many cultures have thus produced literature in which dreams are shown to provide connection with the divine; to be a source of hidden truths; to allow the human soul to travel outside of the body; to transcend the human constraints of geography and time. How have world literatures figured dreams as a point of contact between humans and others? How do dreams figure the relationship between the dreamer and things outside of herself? What can humans do in dreams that they cannot otherwise do? How does the otherness of dreams serve to define the humanness of the waking self? What literary purposes do dreams serve, if not to elucidate the mind of the dreamer? Papers in this seminar will discuss literary accounts of dreaming which are outside of or challenging to the psychoanalytic tradition. We will discuss literature from a range of time periods, from Late Antiquity to the present.

Friday, March 24

Afrodesia McCannon, Rowan University
“A Dream of Relics: The Concluding Dream of the Vie de Saint Louis”
Paige Sweet, University of Minnesota and Sonia Werner, New York University
“How to Enact the Dream: Chernyshevsky’s Revolutionary Vision”
Barbara Alfano, Pennsylvania State University
“Seeking the Other in Francesca Duranti’s Left-Handed Dreams”
Bernard Welt, The Corcoran College of Art and Design
“‘The Sleepers’: Walt Whitman’s Dream Vision”

Saturday, March 25

Margaret Cotter-Lynch, Southeastern Oklahoma State University
“Directional Dreams: Prophecy as Context in the Vita Rusticula”
Carolyn Fay, Pennsylvania State University, Altoona
“‘Dream is a Second Life:’ The Quest for Wholeness in Gérard de Nerval’s Aurélia”
Marc Weiner, Indiana University
“Schnitzler’s Dream-Music”
Will Lehman, University of Florida
“‘Defragging’ Modernity in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life (2001)”

Sunday, March 26

Judith Sheppard, Auburn University
“The Ethical and Narrative Uses of Dreams in Literary Journalism”
Shayna Kessel, University of Southern California
“The Dream of/and the Other in Angels in America”
Graham Stott, Independent Scholar
“Jerome before the Judge: The Dialogic Nature of Dreams”